Introduction

Intercultural competence is imperative in our changing world of globalisation as “the costs of intercultural incompetence are so high, including all the dangers of conflict and war” (UNESCO, 2013, p. 38). Living in a globalising world means engaging with a world of migration and increasing interaction among people with distinct socio-cultural backgrounds. This requires each citizen to respect cultural diversity, interculturally interact, and wisely communicate to avoid hurt and conflicts. Intercultural competence is not innate but nurtured through education and demands a long time to build and grow. Therefore, starting at a young age is necessary to become a citizen with intercultural competence.

Besides, the possibility of being culturally homogenised is an outcome of globalisation. Thus, forming a national culture for children becomes imperative as it creates a foundation for each citizen to understand themselves, develop their sense of belonging to a community as well as maintain cultural diversity as diversity is an inevitable feature of our living world. It is also the motivation for development. On the other hand, in the era of globalisation, it is becoming increasingly important for each person to be aware of different traditions and beliefs and respect cultural differences (Alburo et al., 2005). Therefore, the idea of having more books written by local authors to help children understand their culture, build their sense of belonging to the community and understand their cultural identity to develop intercultural competence is not only well ahead of the curve and the herd, but it is truly a need.

Among different ways and materials of building intercultural competence for children, non-fiction books are considered an effectively educative way (Gill, 2009), and they also convey accurate and straight information to learn about the world of children (Neate, 1999; Seuling, 2005), which is appropriate to the aim of transferring knowledge of national culture for children in the context of globalisation. In Vietnam, after the Doi Moi (Renovation) policy was imposed in 1986 (Freeman, 1996) and especially after the 2000s when the Vietnamese publication market was influenced by globalisation, the concept of a Vietnamese citizen has changed in the publishing field. Instead of building the image of a citizen actively labouring to produce more products and construct Communism, the Vietnamese citizen has been required to have a firm root in their society, a grasp of their culture and intercultural competencies to meet the requirement of a “socialist-oriented market economy”. The publishing field in Vietnam is now paying attention to publish non-fiction books series on national culture so as to build intercultural competence for Vietnamese children in the age of globalisation.

This paper aims to analyse a specific non-fiction book series called “Kể chuyện văn hóa Việt” (Narrating Vietnamese culture), a collection written about Vietnamese national culture for readers aged 8–13 in the contemporary context. The target group is Vietnamese children living in Vietnam, however, Vietnamese children living overseas or other children having Vietnamese origin can also read the series, depending on their particular purposes. This study attempts to explore how this series develops intercultural competence for Vietnamese children in the era of globalisation. It provides a perspective on intercultural education and publishing for children in the context of globalisation in a developing country.

The paper is implemented by a discussion amongst the three authors in the format of an interview with the co-author who also wrote the non-fiction book series that we focus upon. The first part presents intercultural competence, its relationship with national identity, and the content attributes of non-fiction books on national culture as the theoretical framework, and the second half considers how the book series emerged and put this concept into practice.

Literature Review

Intercultural Education and National Identity in the World of Globalisation

The Concept of a Global Citizen

The trend of globalisation leads to changes in different life aspects, including education (Lourenço, 2018). Some organisations, such as Oxfam (2015) and the UNESCO (2014), proposed the concept of "global citizenship education with the image of a ‘global citizen’". For instance, according to the UNESCO (2014, p. 15), global citizenship education “aims to empower learners to engage and assume active roles, both locally and globally, to face and resolve global challenges and ultimately to become proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world”. Similarly, Oxfam (2015) views a global citizen as a person who is aware of the wider world and has a sense of their role as a world citizen; respects and values diversity; has an understanding of how the world works; is passionately committed to social justice; participates in the community at a range of levels, from the local to the global; works with others to make the world a more equitable and sustainable place; and takes responsibility for their actions (Oxfam, 2015, p.5).

The characteristics of “respecting and valuing diversity”, “working with others to make the world a more equitable and sustainable place”, “being committed to social justice”, “participating in the community both locally and globally”, and “contributing to a peaceful, tolerant and sustainable world” that the UNESCO (2014) and Oxfam (2015) promoted require individuals to have the ability to accept and respect differences, be able to inter-culturally communicate and work with other people from different socio-cultural groups. In other words, to become a “global citizen”, a person needs to have intercultural competence (IC), and intercultural education needs to be a part of the “global citizenship education” that Oxfam (2015) and the UNESCO (2014) proposed.

Intercultural Education and Intercultural Competence

Portera (2010) argues that intercultural education takes advantage of trans-cultural and multicultural education. While the former is associated with education for human rights, common human sharing, human ethics, and human needs, the latter is connected with education to recognise and respect other humans and cultures. Moreover, intercultural education provides an opportunity for interplay: “a direct exchange of ideas, principles and behaviours, compared to preconceptions” (Portera, 2010, p. 20).

Intercultural education aims to help individuals build and grow their intercultural competence (Deardorff, 2019). In addition, Byram et al. (2002) contend that individuals’ IC can be understood as “their ability to ensure a shared understanding by people of different social identities, and their ability to interact with people as complex human beings with multiple identities and their own individuality” (Byram et al., 2002, p. 10). The authors also argue: “Intercultural communication is communication on the basis of respect for individuals and equality of human rights as the democratic basis for social interaction”. (Byram et al., 2002, p. 9). Byram and his colleagues (2002) and Portera (2010) agreed that intercultural education is for human rights and based on the equality of human rights. Intercultural education is vital in the world of globalisation as the UNESCO (2013) contends:

The costs of intercultural incompetence are so high, including all the dangers of conflict and war [. . .] just as our future depends upon actions taken today, so the future of cultural diversity respectful for human rights in our social world depends upon our ability to gain and demonstrate intercultural competencies today (UNESCO, 2013, p. 38).

Migration with different socio-cultural groups living together is an unavoidable outcome of globalisation. Intercultural education needs to be implemented to ensure peace and minimise the possibility of conflicts and wars. It is the education for human rights based on respect for cultural diversity and people with distinct social identities.

Although there are several definitions and models of IC, their central concept is to help improve human interaction across other social groups. Deardorff (2019, p. 5) briefly explained that intercultural competencies, in essence, are about enhancing human interactions across differences, whether within a society (differences due to age, gender, religion, socio-economic status, political affiliation, ethnicity, etc.) or across borders.

Intercultural Competence and its Relationship with National Identity

According to Liu and Turner (2018), a thorough apprehension of identity is how to answer the question “Who am I?”. Identity is not only personal but also collective and social. Byram and his colleagues (2002) argue that humans are complex with multiple social identities and individuality. Moreover, national identity is a kind of social identity, which according to Byram and colleagues (2002), is related to culture.

Similarly, Liu and Turner (2018) also find the link between national and cultural identity. They explain that national identity is the product of the development of modern nationalism (Liu & Turner, 2018, p. 1080) because modern nationalism is a political and social movement based on the ideology of modern nationalism after the French Revolution. The political outcome of modern nationalism is the nation-state constructed by two pivotal constituents: the nation-state system and its residents’ national identity, which is affected by cultural identity (Liu & Turner, 2018). Therefore, the authors define “national identity” as the identity of the citizens of a country with their own country’s historical and cultural traditions, moral values, ideals, beliefs, and national sovereignty, among others (Liu & Turner, 2018, p. 1080).

In order to build IC, it is a prerequisite to forming a national identity that is associated with cultural identity. Byram and his colleagues (2002) argue that there are three components of IC, including knowledge, attitudes, and skills, and all of them require each individual the ability to understand their own culture. It can be seen that without the ability to understand who I am, my values and beliefs, my social groups and culture, an individual lacks the foundation to compare and relate other cultures to their own, to acknowledge standard human features and cultural differences, to decentre themselves to see how they may be viewed from an outsider’s perspectives. Therefore, without the ability to understand their identity, a person cannot build the ability to relate, understand other opinions and viewpoints, and empathise. They are soft skills that help deal with diversity and acknowledge differences. Thus, national identity and a sense related to cultural identity need to be developed to form IC.

Two Approaches to Intercultural Education

Deardorff (2019) discussed two approaches for intercultural education: formal and non-formal learning. Formal intercultural learning can occur through the educational curriculum at all school levels or short courses. In contrast, non-formal intercultural learning can happen through public spaces like museums, galleries, libraries, or cultural exchanges. Furthermore, IC still develops through everyday interaction with other people of different social groups such as ethnicities, professions, religions, etc.

From the two approaches for intercultural education that Deardorff (2019) mentioned, it can be seen that non-fiction books about culture can be integrated into both formal and non-formal intercultural learning for children. When combined with formal learning, they can be used as learning and teaching materials for students and teachers. If they are used as materials for non-formal education, they can support students’ extensive reading or their reading for pleasure, simultaneously improve their intercultural knowledge, and stimulate their curiosity to discover other cultures.

From the literature review, non-fiction books on national culture for children can be seen as a way building intercultural competence through forming a national identity, which is shown in Fig. 10.1.

Fig. 10.1
A block flow diagram. Non-fiction books on national culture for children create a relationship between intercultural competence and national identity.

Non-fiction books on national culture for children in the relationship with the building of intercultural competence and national identity

Full size image

Books on National Culture—A Way of Forming Intercultural Competence for Children

The concept of culture, as usual, attracts much attention from academia. According to Olie (1995), over 164 definitions of culture before 1951 have been closely examined. With the vogue words reflecting the modern age of technology and artificial intelligence, Hofstede (2011) states that “Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others” (Hofstede, 2011, p. 3). In addition, according to Dervin (2011), it is necessary to move from a solidified, polarised and objectivist vision of cultures to a liquid approach viewing culture as the fluid, meaning that it is not fixed but changing and always in interaction with others, especially in the world of globalisation. Moreover, Baumann (1996) asserts that “culture is not real but an abstract and purely analytical notion. It does not cause behaviour, but summarises an abstraction from it, and is thus neither normative nor predictive” (p. 11). From our perspectives, we agree with Baumann’s idea that culture summarises an abstraction from behaviour. Through observing the mass behaviour of people from one group, we can recognise the values and ways of life that they share to summarise an abstraction. However, as culture is not solid but fluid, applying simple cultural stereotypes to view an individual can simplify a complex entity whose identity is formed by different factors, such as their profession and other social groups that they participate in. Therefore, we can summarise an abstraction of culture from the behaviour of people of a national group but also be aware that each individual’s identity is much more complex than the abstraction that we have summarised. Culture does not come and go quickly. It takes a long time to form in each society and integrate into or become a part of each individual. The process occurs through learning values that the community appreciates joining collective activities, role modelling, and understanding cultural symbols. The cultural characteristics are ingrained in each person from the influence of the family, school, religion, workplace, friends, and media (Ringov & Zollo, 2007). Therefore, culture provides a sense of belonging to each citizen and a unique feature integral to social management.

The national culture is established from the ways of life shared by the people of one nation (Flynn & Saladin, 2006). National culture is a concept attracting great concern as it impacts all aspects of life, including the economy, social organisation, and environment. National culture helps form the culture of organisations or enterprises, trading, and popular taste of a specific nation. Different nations have attempted to identify and re-identify their own national culture to avoid global cultural homogenisation, a side effect brought up by globalisation. How to culturally exchange and integrate into the world with the inevitable trend of globalisation while still identifying and maintaining national culture is the question emerging in different aspects of life, including both publishing and literature.

In addition, in this increasingly globalised society, citizens must become aware of their traditions and beliefs to be more tolerant of others (Alburo et al., 2005). Diversity, a concept related to globalisation, is an essential issue for education, including ethnicities, culture, and language, since it can diffuse prejudices and stereotypes (Smith-D’Arezzo, 2003). Meanwhile, books help people, especially children, to engage in different worldviews. They become a powerful tool that can change people’s thinking (Kan, 2009). Furthermore, addressing diversity starts by examining one’s community and nation. When children become aware of their culture and customs, it can be easier to respect other people and their traditions (Glazier & Seo, 2005). Glacier and Seo (2005) discuss multicultural literature as a “mirror and window”. This metaphor emphasises the effect of multicultural literature in supporting children to see their own lives as a reflection or a portal for observing diversity in someone else’s life (Glazier & Seo, 2005). Some publishers started concerning indigenous authors and content related to national culture (Salvi, 2019). For every country impacted significantly by globalisation, especially in multi-ethnic or multinational countries, educating people to understand the differences, respect cultural diversity and get on well with each other through reading books is worth concerning.

“Agency” and “identity” are two concepts emerging from the relationship with “national culture”, helping each individual to identify and understand who they are, especially when they are in connection and conversation with other people from other ethnicities or nations (Kan, 2009). “Agency” contributes to creating a sense of belonging in the country and becomes a method of negotiating and claiming a range of cultural/multicultural identities (Duckworth, 2019). Duckworth (2019) notes that “agency” and “identity” are developed in young people through many means, including literacy events. In a multi-ethnic country like Australia, children’s literature has been believed to bring up “a sense of agency in young learners (future citizens of a global community)”. This sense leads to the growth in the publication of indigenous literature as one of the most significant developments in Australia. Such works are considered a natural pull that helps balance the invasion of foreign published works in the previous period. However, it is also noteworthy that how the publisher treats indigenous cultural themes and deals with indigenous writers and illustrators is a long story (Sheahan-Bright, 2011).

Literary works on national culture in the context of globalisation are required to establish the dialogues between global and local themes. Guitierrez (2017), in a study of fairy tales for young readers, develops the theoretical framework of “glocal fusion” in which a globally known narrative pattern is adapted and transformed in a particular (“local”) culture, community, nation, or geographical space. Children today are increasingly exposed to glocal materials, so it has become more critical to interpret cultural artefacts from a global–local reference scale (Guitierrez, 2017). On the other hand, local narratives need to include global elements (Wiebe, 2020). With globalisation, there is an inevitable interaction between local and global features. The global context has influenced the life of any local element. This impact leads to the fact that it is necessary to integrate global and local perspectives and aspects in building characters, language, and illustrations in creating a book for children. However, in another view, the content on national culture poses an issue in authenticity, which refers to the accurate representation of a group of people and their culture and validates local knowledge as a powerful source of information (Kan, 2009). Thus, the process of building contents, characters, illustrations, and selecting language requires a focus on local or national issues and the concern of trans-nation, multi-culture, and cross-culture.

Ha and Dang (2022, p. 212) reviewed and summarised three requirements of the content that non-fiction books on national culture written for children should satisfy, including:

  1. i.

    Able to create and construct “agency” and “identity”. “Agency” contributes to the creation of a sense of belonging in the nation and becomes a method of negotiating and claiming a range of cultural/multicultural identities (Duckworth, 2019).

  2. ii.

    Integrate both global and local elements. The content needs to differentiate between domestic cultural elements and globalised elements or imported cultural elements, and to compare the culture between the past and the present.

  3. iii.

    Diversity: requires the content to transfer cultural diversity as an outcome of globalisation to help children respect other people and diffuse prejudice and stereotypes (Smith-D’Arezzo, 2003).

The three requirements above are the foundation for further discussion about how the series“Kể chuyện văn hóa Việt” develops intercultural competence in the relationship with national identity for Vietnamese children.

Methodology

The Case of Kể Chuyện Văn Hóa Việt—A Non-fiction Book for Children About Vietnamese Culture

“Kể chuyện văn hóa Việt” is a series of three books published by one of the longstanding private publishers in Vietnam. This series conveys knowledge about the cultural features of the Vietnamese (the Kinh), the ethnic majority in Vietnam today, compared with other ethnic minorities of the country, to provide children with an understanding of different socio-cultural groups living together in Vietnam. In addition, even within the same ethnic majority—the Kinh, the series also presents the differences in the ways of living in different geographical regions. By giving information about the diversity of ethnic groups in Vietnam, and the differences in ways of living among the Kinh that is commonly called the Vietnamese—the ethnic majority, the series offers children intercultural knowledge about the people of their own country as the first step to stimulate their curiosity about Vietnamese culture, to build their respect for differences and to empathise with others, based on the ability to relate to themselves. Therefore, intercultural competence is not the term born and used only for the world of globalisation. Even in the same country, among people speaking the same language, each person always needs to build intercultural competence to speak to others from a different socio-cultural background and might share different values. Therefore, everyday communication is always intercultural communication. Each book focusses on one topic and engages a familiar and fundamental issue in the Vietnamese daily lives such as eating (Volume 1), clothing (Volume 2), and housing (Volume 3). Through three volumes, young readers perceive the systematic features of the national culture. This series was born in the context that national cultural values are not much appreciated in the Vietnamese general education system (Toàn, 2021). In addition, experts are concerned that many young people will lose their cultural identity in the context of globalisation (Pham, 2019).

Reflective Writing as a Method

Reflection and reflective writing are no longer novel terms since these two concepts have been thoroughly dissected in either theoretical or practical literary studies. McCarthy (2011) notes that it is crucial to bear in mind that reflection is socially constructed and could be interpreted in various ways. Generally, reflection may be seen as a problem-solving process as we learn from reflecting on experience (Dewey, 1933). This process brings us the chance to contemplate, assess, and look back on the journey we have experienced. According to McCarthy (2011), reflection is increasingly employed in professional disciplines to neutralise the disparity in professional practice between theories and methods practitioners claim to use, and those practitioners really use. Besides, reflective practice can give a technique for evaluating tacit knowledge—things that researchers or authors instinctively know but cannot easily convey (McCarthy, 2011).

In this paper, we employed reflective writing as a method to extract and analyse our thoughts on the book writing/reading process. McGill and Beaty (2001) declare that reflective writing could be considered a form of metacognition, helping writers gain value through translating the experience into language and enabling distance and objectivity to reveal insights not recognised during the event. While the process might partially or entirely be descriptive, it is still helpful since it lays the foundation for further contemplation on the feelings associated with the event, thus entailing the re-evaluation of the experience (McGill & Beaty, 2001). Writing a trade book series for children is an exciting but challenging process, even with a well-prepared author. Finding the right words, creating appealing characters, and plotting proper scenes are not only tasks that manifest inventiveness but also steps of a self-discovery process, with which first-time writers easily encounter setbacks. Thus, reflecting on what the author has gone through would help the audience understand how the goal of this book project is achieved step by step.

One author of the research is also the author of the book series, while two other authors of this current study played the role of interviewers to help the book author brainstorm and reflect on her writing process. Their interview questions were designed to build the conceptual framework and navigate the flow of thoughts conceived by the series author, which includes the whole process of constructing the book series, starting from the pre-writing stage (such as brainstorming ideas, identifying the context and the image of the main character) to the writing stage (how to convey national identity and intercultural competence through the narrative of the main character). The questions to interview the author of the book series are the following:

  • How do you come up with the idea for your book series “Kể chuyện văn hóa Việt” (Narrating Vietnamese culture)?

  • How do you convey national culture in the book series?

  • How do you embed the idea of intercultural competence in the book series?

The book author’s reflection answers the interview questions, which reveals the way the series builds intercultural competence in the relationship with national identity for Vietnamese children. The following part presents the book author’s reflection, based on her conversational interview with two other researchers of this study and her reflective journals (Ortlipp, 2008).

Reflection

How do I Come Up with the Idea for the Book?

A representative of THB Publishing House approached me in mid-2018 with an offer to make a series of books on national culture for young children. That representative was informed that I was a teacher who composed some syllabuses and learning materials on Vietnamese culture for private schools in Hanoi. The goal of the book series was to convey cultural values to the children, which is the gap in today’s publishing industry. For me, it was not an easy job to switch from a teacher to a storyteller through language and images.

To make the decision, I spoke with some experts in the publishing industry to learn about the historical mission of children’s characters over different periods. They told me that publications must be for national propaganda in Vietnam. After Doi Moi (Renovation) in 1986 (Freeman, 1996), the aim was to establish a “socialist-oriented market economy”, thus featuring new citizens in the context of internationalisation through Vietnamese literature. While domestic books for Vietnamese children lack an indigenous image, the main characters of translated books often have global personality traits to help children develop the sense of being global citizens. The mission of spreading a global citizen’s image through a series to children seems to be overwhelmed for me who is only used to interacting with children as a mother and a teacher. However, there is a motivation encouraging me to write a book on national culture for children, which seems to be inadequate in the contemporary publishing market in Vietnam. Going to a bookstore in Hanoi, translated books and English-written books for children occupy most of the bookshelves, while books written by indigenous authors seem to be scarce. It is even scarcer to find books on Vietnamese culture, which focusses on building intercultural competence in the relationship with national identity.

The question “Why do we write children’s book?” has come to my mind many times. I enjoyed an article of the same name by Lindgren (2017) who suggested that the above question should be replaced with “Who do we write children’s book for?” Is it for publishers or teachers? Or is it for critics or politicians? We need to be grateful to the people named above because they help affirm the role of children's books in our society. But who drives us to write is incomprehensibly enthusiastic readers who “willingly take a book’s poor words and from them shape a fantasy paradise”. “This paradise lies out of reach of all adults, because none of them, not even writers, have a key. They had it once when they were children themselves. But they’ve lost it since”. (Lindgren, 2017, pp. 195).

It prompted me to make a series of “Kể chuyện văn hóa Việt”, which always makes me curious about what paradise I will open up to the children. Building intercultural competence in the relationship with national identity, if so, that is probably found in the world of young readers, not a principle that I forced myself to follow from the moment I started writing.

How do I Convey National Identity in the Book Series?

I could not completely answer this question in the first days of writing this series. I imagined that a sense of belonging to the community or the nation should be constructed before becoming aware of identity, which specifies features of the community or the nation. Unlike other popular science books, the book series builds the main character that readers can immerse in to see themselves in the context of interactions. This protagonist is a Vietnamese child born and raised in the context of rapid globalisation and urbanisation in Vietnam. Girls and boys of his age can find themselves in his thoughts and dialogues with his parents. They belong to a generation of young Vietnamese who grow up in an era when foreign cultures easily and rapidly penetrate and dominate all media such as the internet, television, and books. The knowledge of traditional culture is gradually becoming unfamiliar, although activities reflecting such culture are still being practised in daily life that the children can observe and recognise that these activities belong to the Vietnamese and are different from other ethnicities and countries. For example, any child can ask, “Why do the Vietnamese eat rice?” “Why do the Vietnamese tend to boil every food instead of cooking it with oil or spices?” “Why is Áo dài the traditional Vietnamese costume?” “Why do Vietnamese always have an altar to their ancestors?” “Why do villages have a communal house?” Answering these questions will help answer important questions such as “Who am I?” “Where is my homeland?” “How am I different from the world around me?”—those that help consolidate each citizen’s agency and national identity. I do not own a vision that my series would help answer those big questions because this requires the integration of different media in a comprehensive educational system. I aim to answer the small questions each child can pose daily and answer them through the main character’s story in his interaction with his mother and father. It is expected to bring each reader a sense of belonging to the Vietnamese community.

To achieve this goal, I divided the series into three volumes concerning cultural elements children are exposed to from birth until fully grown. Volume 1—The eating of Vietnamese people tells cultural features of the Vietnamese through the stories of “What do the Vietnamese eat?” “How do the Vietnamese cook and eat?” and “What is the Vietnamese’s table manner?” Volume 2—The Vietnamese clothing shows the effort to answer a list of questions, including “How was Áo dài—the traditional Vietnamese costume formed?” “What did the Vietnamese wear in the past?” and “How do Vietnamese people weave clothes?” Volume 3—The Vietnamese housing tells the story of “Where and how did the Vietnamese build houses?” “What materials did Vietnamese people build their houses with?” “What is special in the Vietnamese house?” These questions systematically explain how the Vietnamese have adapted to the environment, and through those activities, they have formed and built their culture. The Vietnamese live in hot, humid, and rainy climates, so they eat plant-based foods, build tall and airy houses, and wear loose, relaxed and comfortable clothes. The people have been adapting to the working condition of wet rice farming, which requires much labour, so they highly appreciate the community. It expresses how the village is organised and how the people gather around a circular tray while eating. The tradition of ancestor worship and respecting the elder is shown by the fact that Vietnamese people invite the elder before eating and have their own ancestral worship space in the family. The flexible adaptation, the community, and respect for the ancestors and the roots are typical cultural features of Vietnamese people. The publisher and I hope to help shape children’s national identity and agency by understanding and spontaneously following the guidance of the previous generations in the family.

How do I Embed the Idea of Intercultural Competence in the Book Series?

My readers are children born in the context of globalisation. What they communicate in their daily lives is the exchange and integration of the global and the local. For instance, they will find in their daily meals that besides rice as an indispensable dish, there is sushi, kebabs, or curry, which come from Japan, Korea, or India, as their parents tell them. Fried chicken and pizza have become every child’s favourite food. It is a story happening in every country in the world, and people can gradually realise that globalisation is no longer an alien term since it could be reflected in their family meals. However, the pizza and fried chicken pieces in a Vietnamese family meal are different from the Chinese’, and they are not the same as the Japanese or the Korean. The localisation is reflected in the cooking style, with local spices added to create a suitable flavour that helps form indigenous taste. Space also matters. Vietnamese children have to learn to eat fried chicken originating from the United States with chopsticks when they are five or six. This dish will be placed with other dishes on a round tray for the whole family to enjoy. They will have to practice the ritual of inviting elders before eating. The happy atmosphere in the meal brings deliciousness to all family members. It is an example of what Gutierrez (2020) mentioned: “a globally known narrative pattern is adapted and transformed in a certain (‘local’) culture, community, nation, or geographical space. Children today are increasingly exposed to glocal material, so it has become more important to interpret cultural artefacts from a global–local reference scale”. My book series starts with the situation of the global–local culture integration to guide the young readers into the story of national culture.

Moreover, my book series provides knowledge of Vietnamese national culture compared to other cultures. Nowadays, Vietnamese children can see the same clothing and housing as children from other nations. However, they are also easy to observe the meticulous differences. For example, Vietnamese people have a traditional costume called Áo dài, often worn at important events. In apartments or villas, there is a particular space for ancestral worship. In addition, they will see that their grandparents and parents often come back to their hometown on traditional holidays to visit relatives and remember their roots. Telling those differences helps build a national identity for children and exposes them to cultural diversity. For instance, since Áo dài is the traditional costume of the Vietnamese, then what are the other national costumes of other countries? Within a multi-ethnic country like Vietnam, the way different ethnic groups eat, dress, and build houses are also diverse. The illustration-based mind map is a way my book series provides visual aids to foster children’s thinking about diversity and respect for the natural existence of cultural differences.

For a developing country like Vietnam, globalisation entails modernisation and urbanisation. The cultural differences between what is considered modern, imported from foreign cultures, and being seen as “urban” and what is deemed obsolete, traditional, and often labelled as “rural” have created prejudice and stereotypes in Vietnam. From the current context, my book series tries to make a journey to discover the tradition. This discovery is led by a parent when the question is posed: for example, today, we live in solid, fully furnished houses, then looking back to the past, how did our ancestors build them? We have imported many materials from abroad to build modern houses, then why do we have to learn from the past principles in constructing shelters? Áo dài, considered the Vietnamese national costume, was it born along with the existence of Vietnamese people or was it the product of the acculturation process that explains the association between Vietnam and the Western countries? The explanations help the children understand that today is the result of yesterday and appreciate past achievements and traditions. In addition, to provide an objective view of the Vietnamese in the past, the book series uses visual materials in the book “Technique du Peuple Annamite” by Henri Oger, a Frenchman, and his collaborators who travelled around Hanoi and sketched the daily lives in the early years of the last century. It is expected to give the young readers a look at the differences of the Vietnamese themselves at different stages, which is an inevitable difference, a difference that should be respected.

When I started writing this book series, I put myself into the children’s shoes to observe with their eyes and think alongside their thinking. I understand what needs to be built for the children to adapt to the rapidly globalising context. My book series does not teach intercultural skills but provides a perspective on diversity and a way to accept differences as the nature of that diversity.

Discussion

Children’s books are an exceptional means of reflecting objective reality and a tool for education. By reading books, children can approach and comprehend cultural values, turn human capabilities into their own, and at the same time form and develop good human qualities. In other words, the knowledge acquired in the book positively affects the development of moral qualities (virtue) and abilities (talent)—two fundamental aspects of human personality for children. However, children’s books will only promote their full educational effect if they have a proper reading culture: they know how to choose books with good ideological content and high artistic value and understand, evaluate, and absorb knowledge correctly and creatively. Educating children in reading culture is an urgent requirement for all those interested in the comprehensive and harmonious development of the young generation. From the first moment that the author of the series “Kể chuyện văn hóa Việt” has engaged with the writing process, those thoughts mentioned above are deemed the guiding torch. The discussion below is based on the criteria to develop the content for non-fiction books on national culture to build intercultural competence for children (Ha & Dang, 2022) which involves three requirements: (i) being able to create and construct “agency” and “identity”, (ii) integrating both global and local elements, (iii) and highlighting cultural diversity.

The sharing of the book author demonstrates ways that the book series builds a national identity and agency for children by giving familiar, essential topics (such as eating, clothing, housing) and concrete examples that children can observe directly and frequently practice in their daily lives (e.g. to use chopsticks to eat instead of forks and spoons) to help them understand their culture and build their sense of belonging to the community and national identity as well. This is different from how the national textbooks try to develop the national identity for Vietnamese children. According to Grigoreva (2014), the official textbooks for Vietnamese children often attempt to shape their national identity and intergroup solidarity by emphasising their beautiful and glorious origin. Although there are different ethnic groups in Vietnam, all Vietnamese people share the same root: “Children of the Dragon, Grandchildren of the Fairy”, and they share the tradition of myths and legends about the ancient past. On the contrary, the book series Kể chuyện văn hóa Việt aims to form children’s national identity from familiar, simple and essential things related to children’s lives, like eating, housing, and clothing.

Grigoreva (2014) also argues that although the strategy of socialisation for Vietnamese children through focusing on their glorious origin offered by the textbooks appears to be effective, there is a problem that Vietnamese children and later adults can immerse themselves in the world of legends and myths without being able to understand themselves and the world around them. Therefore, it is necessary to give children other views about their identity, based on reality and daily life, to help them critically and practically think about themselves to understand who they are and where they live and grow. With this view, Kể chuyện văn hóa Việt not only provides another path to build Vietnamese identity but can also be an answer to overcome the limitations of the official textbooks.

The book series is based on the context of North Vietnam with typical cultural features of Vietnamese people living in the Red River Delta to build a national identity for Vietnamese children. This poses a controversial issue in identifying the concept of national identity for book writers and the Vietnamese education system. According to Barrett (2007), national identity is the concept used to connect and homogenise people from different regions and ethnic groups of a nation to prepare the workforce for industry, which is the centre of modernisation. However, prioritising the mainstream culture related to the Hanoi area (McCann et al., 2004) and lacking the concern or marginalising other cultures can even lead to conflicts and misunderstanding inside a nation (Nguyen, 2016). Should education on national identity be changed to be more inclusive to cover the diverse cultures of different regions and ethnic groups in Vietnam? Should the Vietnamese education system shift the point of view to help children understand that they live in a multicultural country where the diversity of different cultures builds their national identity? They are questions that need to receive more concern from educators and policymakers in Vietnam.

In terms of integrating both global and local elements in the book, the series Kể chuyện văn hóa Việt offers children knowledge of other cultures such as Japanese, Korean in comparison with Vietnamese culture. By integrating both global and local elements in the book, the book series exposes children to an intercultural environment which can help each child to reflect upon themselves and the world around them in the context of interacting with other cultures, which according to Byram et al. (2002) is a way of building intercultural competence.

When it comes to highlighting cultural diversity, the book series tries to achieve that goal by presenting the culture of different ethnic minorities in Vietnam in comparison with the ethnic majority (Kinh/ Viet). Similarly, information about other cultures from the neighbouring nations is also given to expose children to cultural diversity.

Implications and Limitations

In terms of theoretical implications, the study points out the relationship between intercultural competence and national identity in writing non-fiction books on national culture in the age of globalisation. In terms of practical implications, the study shows a specific case of writing non-fiction books on national culture for children to build their intercultural competence and national identity, in order to particularise the framework of writing non-fiction books on national culture for children. The study also suggests some directions for other book series on national culture for children in the era of globalisation.

The study is not without limitations. First, the research focusses on one case of writing non-fiction books on national culture for children, therefore, the findings cannot be representative, instead, they rather provide an example of how to write a non-fiction book on national culture for Vietnamese children. Second, the research employs the reflection of the book author who also co-authors the study as the method, therefore, subjectivity cannot be avoided. However, this methodology also reveals the author’s insight of building intercultural competence in the association with national identity for children. Third, since building intercultural competence is a thread receiving a multitude of concerns from different researchers and educators around the world, and the concept of intercultural competence is still in its progress of formation, findings of this current study still need to be updated so as to form a better framework of writing non-fiction books on national culture for children, as well as to offer further suggestions for future research of this topic.